Your weight is making my job harder

Day 3 of my hospital visit and the surgeon looks at me and says “Now, your weight will make this a more complicated surgery and I just have to let you know that we’ll do our best but there are a few things that could go wrong…”

“Hopefully you’re good at your job because there really isn’t much I can do about my weight right now” is the response I WISH I had the presence of mind to give. But obviously I just nodded as I felt my face getting redder and redder, especially when I looked over at my mother who was staring at the floor.

I’m actually pretty good a coping with stressful situations – and by that I mean remaining externally calm as my mind races in a million directions. I could practically hear the synapses in my braining screaming “Weight! She’s talking about weight! Oh nonononononononooononononono – hide!!!! Make yourself small! Don’t ask questions! Don’t move until it’s over!”

I dunno, that’s not that uncommon. But with that level of stress – which is a very real thing and has very real physiological consequences on the body – is it any wonder that I ended up in the hospital?! People will tell you that I ended up in the hospital because of my weight (or maybe if they are slightly more woke then they will say because of my poor diet and sedentary lifestyle). I’m not denying those played a part, but, ummmm, STRESS? Anyone?!? To me that’s a no-brainer (although you know what they say about hindsight…)

I know I said in my very first post that I wouldn’t go down the rabbit hole of talking about my negative experiences. I believe I said something like "your comments on my body are irrelevant”. Well, I lied…I knew I was going to write about this experience from the get (I just didn’t want to lose any potential readers who weren’t interested in some of my shitty life experiences #sorrynotsorry). Also, I might have been a little tipsy on a lovely cabernet sauvignon when I wrote that first post…

Back to the surgeon. My favourite (read: least favourite) part of that whole experience was what she said to me as I was on the gurney being wheeled back to my hospital room after the surgery. Having previously gone in to great detail around all the complications associated with operating on a larger-bodied patient, she decided that that was the opportune time to bring up the option of bariatric surgery. In my post-anesthetic fogginess, I just stared and her and said “I think I’d like to explore other options before that – seems a bit drastic”, and then went and passed out.